The invention relates to a toy building set of building elements with coupling means for interconnecting building elements, where the coupling means are arranged in a periodical pattern with a modular spacing allowing interconnection of building elements in discrete relative positions to form composite structures.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,555,019 discloses a video production system comprising a miniature vehicle with an on-board video camera. The vehicle can be remotely controlled to move around in a miniature landscape, and the video camera transmits real time video images to a remote video production system.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,005,282 describes an example of building elements of such a toy building set in which the coupling means are in the form of studs and corresponding cavities for receiving studs on other building elements in a releasable frictional engagement. Other toy building sets with several different types of coupling means are known, and the present invention comprises such toy building sets with interconnectable toy building elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,030,158 describes a toy building set in which some building elements contain passive optical components such as lenses, mirrors and prisms. Optical instruments may be built with this building set.
Other building sets with building elements containing passive optical components are shown eg in the documents U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,521,339, 1,889,284, 3,535,817, 3,574,954, 4,132,028 and 4,911,673. It is common to these that they involve building sets exclusively for the construction of passive optical instruments.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,481,257 shows a system with a remote-controlled toy having a permanently incorporated video camera which transmits images of its surroundings to a receiver having a display. A user observes the images on the display, and, on the basis of this, the user operates a control unit, which generates control signals that are transmitted to the remote-controlled toy. The user is hereby able to control and manoeuvre the remote-controlled toy solely on the basis of images on the display. What is involved here is a ready configured system, which the user has no possibility of changing, and particularly the position of the camera on the toy cannot be changed.
An object of the invention is to provide a toy building set which gives the user a greater degree of freedom than the known systems.
This object is achieved by the invention, which is a toy building set with a toy building element that contains a camera. Hereby, the user may e.g. build a remote-controlled toy, where the camera may be placed in positions at the user""s option, which is not possible with any of the known systems. If the constructed toy is e.g. a remote-controlled car, the user may place the camera so that it xe2x80x9clooksxe2x80x9d ahead, and the user sees images of the surroundings ahead of the car on the display, which will be the normal situation.
In addition, the user also has the possibility of arranging the camera in more imaginative and untraditional positions. In such positions, the camera can xe2x80x9clookxe2x80x9d laterally, rearwardly, upwardly, downwardly or in any direction that the user might wish. Thus, it is just the user""s imagination that sets limits, and with the camera arranged in such alternative positions it is possible to vary the degree of difficulty of the task it is for the user to control a remote-controlled car solely on the basis of images from the camera. The user hereby has the opportunity of creating new challenges himself. Thus, it will be a different and considerably more-exciting challenge for the user to control a remote-controlled car on the basis of images taken laterally or rearwardly, and these new possibilities will stimulate the users"" imagination and their creativity.
The invention provides the possibility of building toy scenes and landscapes with movable objects such as toy figures and vehicles that can be moved around in the toy landscape, while pictures such as video films are being made/taken of the scene/setup. It is particularly advantageous that the building elements used are of the type known eg from U.S. Pat. No. 3,005,282 with coupling studs arranged in a periodical pattern with a uniform spacing between the coupling studs. When a film is being made, repeated recordings of the same event are often made, and the final result is then being composed of the best sequences from different takes. When making repeated recordings or takes of the same event it is difficult to arrange everything in exactly the same way each time, and moving objects such as figures and vehicles are possibly not moved along exactly the same path and at the same speed. Here the coupling means on the building elements are of great help in obtaining the same positions for each of the often many objects used to compose a scene, and in the final product the observer will get the impression that the whole sequence is the result of only one recording session.
While a vehicle such as a toy car will often move along a fairly simple path, a toy figure simulating eg a human being or an animal will usually have a much more complex motion pattern of its limbs. When making recordings of eg a toy figure in motion it is important that the motions of the figure appear to be natural and lifelike, and in order to achieve this the figure can be placed in predetermined positions along its planned path and with a predetermined posture in each position. This can be very time consuming, and software exists for editing recorded sessions and individual images. By means of known software it is possible to synthesize one or several images by interpolation between recorded images. The recording staff thus only needs to record a fraction of the images needed in the final film, and the remaining intermediary images will then be synthesized by interpolation.
When making such individual images the user or director needs to arrange predetermined points along the planned path of movement of the figure or other object with great precision in order to achieve natural and lifelike movements. Here again the coupling means on the building elements are of great help.